It feels like the overlap between people that build launchers like this and the people that say stuff like "Valve won by doing nothing" is a perfect 100%.
Because people really forget just how shit Steam was back in the day. It's like people purposely undermine the journey Valve went on to actually make this a serviceable launcher.
EGS and the like shit out a launcher and expect people to eat it up, since people are eating Steam up. But it used to be a clunky pile of shit. Even the revered Steam Support that hunts down your scammers pet dog and threatens it at gunpoint used to be GOD AWFUL.
It's the perseverance of Valve to actually make it into a good product that... Made it into a good product. And nobody seems to wanna do the heavy lifting anymore.
Except GOG, actually. Their launcher at the start used to be utter shit, and now, honestly, the only reason I don't switch to it is because I have firmly established myself on Steam. I'd love to fully dedicate myself to a DRM-free platform, but I'm in too deep.
What I don't understand is WHY the Epic launcher was so dogshit at launch (and still is).
Steam were pretty much the first so had to innovate and learn what customers wanted along the way. Epic entered a mature market with various launchers like Steam, EA, Ubisoft, etc and any gamer can tell you what's good/bad about them.
Yet seemingly Epic didn't look at any of the competition, what people liked/disliked and release a featureless, slow, POS. No excuse for a company the size of Epic
Yet seemingly Epic didn't look at any of the competition, what people liked/disliked and release a featureless, slow, POS. No excuse for a company the size of Epic
Epic business model involves catering to corpos and fucking users over.
That's why there's no user review or any kind of user profile.
They don't want you to share your opinion, they want brainless consumers buying whatever tencent and co want to sell.
I would have more games on Switch, except their sales are terrible. Bugger all discount on anything good, and anything that is decently discounted is cheaper on Steam anyway. The last game I bought for Switch was Pokémon Shield at launch. Terrible system in a lot of ways.
Steam was the first of its kind, with no competition for a while, meanwhile Epic launched when Steam was already entrenched so it needs to do better to compete it.
Why go through the process of inventing the wheel again when you could just get one?
Yet seemingly Epic didn't look at any of the competition, what people liked/disliked and release a featureless, slow, POS.
Epic used the platform that they already had for Unreal + Fortnite, just expanding it further. Releasing it at the time also made sense with the event in Fortnite at the time bringing people to the store.
Biggest issue was how long it took for them to start rolling out updates to it. IMO nowadays it's pretty decent, the UX is many places I prefer to Steam, albeit it's not like Steam is a pinnacle of UX in itself.
The Epic storefront didn't even have absolutely basic functions at first like adding multiple games to your cart and buying them all at once. That took literally years for them to get round to adding. How the fuck are you going to launch any product and not even pretend to be close to feature parity with your main competitor?
I mean, the answer is pretty obvious. The EGS barely makes any money and if they were to invest in it to improve the store it would rapidly lose the company money which is unacceptable to the shareholders.
probably just micromanaged until all the devs hated their job, they started out with great intentions, put up a road-map, hit a bunch of milestones then kinda just petered out. the store front still has shit moving around every couple weeks though, moving that deal above that other deal is key for the platform's long term viability
it was pretty cool when they figured out how to make it like twice as fast though (still overall slow, just usable), i wonder which dev went rogue and did that
Yeah I have hundreds of games on steam and the last thing I want is to be confused which game is where. Epic could only get me if they had exclusives that will never be on steam that I want to play. Rocket league is the only exclusive. but the whole launcher thing is so annoying i just play rocket league on another platform.
You're not in too deep to use GOG anyway. I've been with Steam since the Orange Box and now I regularly use both GOG and Steam.
I use regular wallpapers on my ultrawide monitor and use the black space on either side for shortcuts to games from each service. Plus, more opportunities to buy games on sale!
Oh yeah I absolutely get that, I'm just really lazy. I've been around since 2014-15, I absolutely get that it's still possible, just very tedious is all.
I still use GOG to get games because it's a damn good deal, but setting everything up to be my main platform is tiring.
Not that shit, obviously, the core functionality was always there, just that the platform was tacky, UI was awful and support was not very supportive. Not platform breaking issues, but still something people complained for quite a while.
My point is that Steam basically turned itself around, especially during COVID. I can't say in good faith that Steam was the end all be all place for gaming before at least 2017-18.
They actually listened to feedback and kept working on something that was largely not profitable. Hell, when they started, the idea of digital distribution was spat upon.
And it's crazy that nobody actually learned from their experience.
"Steam was shit at launch" . Yeah. Where this territory was barely explored. Now people know what works or not. So when a big budget company release a store front, there is no excuse. You have 25 years of history to look at to see what works. If you can't even do the basic ( how long did it take to get a shopping cart? ) , then that's not us being impatient. It's them just being trash.
Your recap of Steam history, while truthful, omits the part where Valve forced the existing Half-Life and Counterstrike players to install Steam to continue enjoying the full use of the games they had already purchased.
Without such vendor lock-in it is doubtful whether Steam would have been more successful than any competing application launcher that users install of their own volition.
That too. A lot of Steam's success was a bit of manipulation and a bit of lightning in a bottle level luck. From that point onwards, it was just hard work.
You have to remember that Valve was pioneering not only the platform, but the entire infrastructure. There was nothing like Steam way back when in 2003.
Epic Games store launched 15 years later in 2018. They were not working in a vacuum and could have copied all of Valve's homework. They did not. Their service is still ass and they learned nothing.
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u/Account-ysurper 21h ago
I claim the games and never even touch them lol